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Monday, June 12, 2017

The trouble with our time can be
summed up in the shorthand used in text messaging: TMI—too much information. We
are besieged and overwhelmed with news stories and scandals and tweets and
government outrages that bleed into each other to the point that we can hardly
keep them straight—even those of us who would like to. This is the case with
the Trump-Russia scandal. Most of us know the basics: the Russians hacked into
the DNC and somehow interfered with our recent presidential election; Trump
seems to have a liking for Russians in general (he’s married to one) and
Russian premier Vladimir Putin in particular; and several of his associates, such
as Paul Manafort (former Trump campaign chair), Carter Page (Trump campaign
adviser), General Mike Flynn (Trump appointee as National Security Chief until
he had to be fired for lying about contacts with Russians), Trump’s son-in-law
Jared Kushner (now a target of the FBI inquiry), and even Jefferson Sessions,
Trump’s Attorney General (who neglected, under oath, to reveal his contacts
with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak), seem to have had
dealings or ties with Russian businessmen or politicians. But aside from these
basics, most Americans are easy prey to the Republican and administration
denials: all of this is coincidence, partisan lies, and fake news, with no real
substance, no smoking gun.

But
if one really looks into all this, at the pattern of events both before and
after the election, things really begin to take ominous shape. We begin to see
not only patterns, but also motives for the Trump administration’s inclination
and need to cozy up to the Russians, even to the point of risking illegality.
And it all comes down to basically two lines of evidence:

1) Trump’s dealings with Russian
oligarchs in the years before the election, especially after he went bankrupt
six or more times in the 1990s and, with banks refusing to lend to him, in desperate
need of an alternate source of cash to promote his continuing real estate
projects; and 2) Trump’s zeal to pave the way for a 2014 Arctic oil-drilling deal
between Exxon Mobil (and its then-CEO, Rex Tillerson) and Russia’s big
‘privatized’ oil company, Rosneft. In short, aside from other sleazy doings we surely
do not know about, Donald Trump was in debt to, and hence liable to ‘influence’
by Russian oligarchs (read ‘criminals’) who had made off with the cream of
Russia’s state-owned enterprises and so were flush with cash; and through them
to Vladimir Putin (no one, apparently, became a rich oligarch without Putin’s
approval), zealous to get back to enriching his nation and himself with oil
revenues. Both these reasons feed into each other, and pulling on threads from
one always has the possibility of leading the ‘puller’ back to the criminal stench
in the other. Hence Trump’s eagerness to short-circuit any investigation into
his finances (no tax returns), and equally, to short-circuit any investigation
into Russian influence on the American election and/or his closest associates
like Mike Flynn. Trump didn’t intervene in the FBI investigation by James Comey
into the Flynn case because he’s a ‘nice guy’ protecting a loyal supporter. No
No. The investigation into Flynn’s dealings with Russia was toxic on its own
(cooperating with Russian influence on an election), and also for what it might
reveal about Trump and his obligations to the Russians even before the election.

What
one needs to make sense of this is both reviews of the timeline of events
leading Trump into the White House, and some articles and documentaries showing
clearly how Donald Trump’s projects (Trump Soho, Trump Tower, and various other
Trump-named enterprises around the world) are shot through with Russian
financiers and Russian tenants and paper companies that hide their assets
behind phony names and addresses. For the first, I am grateful to Frank Vyan
Walton, whose June 10 article on the Daily
Kos, “Testifying Under Oath Could Absolutely End Trump’s Presidency,” with
its key detailed timeline, really nails the pattern down as nothing else could.
And second, the documentary “The Dubious Friends of Donald Trump,” made by the
Dutch company Zembla, which reveals chapter and verse about the truly criminal
characters with whom Donald Trump and his enterprises are deeply entwined. Yet
another documentary is a similar but shorter film by BBC Newsnight, “Donald
Trump’s Business Links to the Mob.” All you have to do to get the odor of
Donald Trump’s criminality (and, since the BBC doc was run on March 4, 2016,
every American could have been informed of this before voting) is google and watch
either one.

What each does in its turn
is to introduce us to the shady characters (and outright criminals like Felix
Sater and cement king Tony Salerno) Trump has been associating with in business
for many years. One might dismiss these dealings by consigning them to the
past, but Mr. Sater’s name has come up as recently as February 19, 2017. On
that date, the New York Times
reported in a piece titled “A Back-Channel Plan for Ukraine
and Russia, Courtesy of Trump Associates” that Sater, along with Trump’s
personal lawyer Michael D. Cohen and a shady Ukrainian character named
Artemenko (and originally including the now-departed Gen. Michael Flynn), had
proposed a way for the Trump administration to get sanctions against Russia
lifted (these Russian sanctions, both the ones imposed in 2014 during the
Ukraine crisis, and the later ones imposed by President Obama in December 2016
after American intelligence agencies confirmed that the hackers in the American
election were definitely Russian, play a significant role in all the
shenanigans the Trump Administration is now trying to cover up, so keep them
in mind). The proposal obviously wasn’t successful, but it’s important both
for its brazenness, and for its resuscitation (or perhaps reappearance) of
Sater—whom Trump has insisted he hardly knew and wouldn’t recognize if he saw
him. But clearly Sater is still active, and that means that Trump’s connection
to the mob and the Russians (Sater, born in Russia, operated as a mobster in
New York, served jail time for stock manipulation, was a partner in Bayrock—the
firm that Trump partnered with to finance Trump Soho, among other things—and became
part of the FBI’s witness-protection program to stay out of jail) is still
active as well. Which figures. You don’t simply walk away from mobsters, and my
best guess is that Trump is still beholden to them via kompromat or
blackmail—as the explosive dossier that came from former British intelligence officer
and head of MI6’s Russia desk, Christopher Steele, alleges.)

Now the mountains that
Trump has moved to discredit the Russian investigation begin to make more
sense, for if it were all just ‘fake news,’ why worry? Clearly, though,
something BIG is at stake. Something very big. And it’s not just Trump’s constant
contacts with mobsters, though, for a U.S. President, that’s big enough. It’s
not even Trump’s compromising activities in Russia (where the alleged “golden
showers” took place—though Trump’s puzzling comment to James Comey about “no
hookers” perhaps gives that scurrilous allegation more weight than it might
otherwise have.) No, it’s time to get back to the money. There’s a very weighty
deal at stake, one that Russian President Putin has a keen, almost desperate
interest in. It’s a deal that first made the headlines on April 18, 2012, when Reuters reported: “Exxon,
Rosneft Unveil $500 billion offshore venture.” And what that deal between Russia’s Rosneft (allegations have been made
that Trump bought into this company as well) and America’s ExxonMobil involved
was an “offshore exploration partnership…that could invest upward of $500
billion in developing Russia’s vast energy reserves in the Arctic and Black
Sea.” That isa big deal, both for Exxon—which has been keen to find new reserves
before the oil industry goes bust—and Rosneft, which Putin is desperate to get
going to reignite Russia’s key oil income. Joe Romm of ThinkProgress put it succinctly in his headline article on Jan. 8: “Did Putin help elect Trump to restore $500 billion Exxon
oil deal killed by sanctions?” Romm says this in his article:

The
top priority for Putin and the kleptocrats who benefit from his rule is
enriching the Kremlin’s coffers and their own, which have been hurt by the
sanctions. And Trump’s election already appears to have delivered $11 billion
to the Kremlin through sale of a 19.5 percent stake in Rosneft, “confounding
expectations that the Kremlin’s standoff with the West would scare off major
investors,” as Fortune has
reportedin a must-read piece. Indeed, if Trump and Tillerson instead end the sanctions that are
blocking the Exxon-Rossneft deal, it is going to look suspiciously like a half
trillion dollar quid pro quo for Putin’s help getting elected.

End the sanctions in return for
election help: that’s a pretty big quid pro quo. But Romm adds something else to
consider: the otherelement
blocking the Arctic deal was the Paris accords agreed to by President Obama. Indeed,
though President Trump has been, as yet, unable to get the Russia sanctions
lifted (more about that below), he has already sold out the entire planet by
withdrawing the United States from the Paris accords—so that his and Rex
Tillerson’s deal to drill in the Arctic Ocean (itself made possible by global
warming’s melting ice in the Arctic) and make untold trillions in profit, can
go ahead as planned. If only he can get those damned sanctions on Russia lifted.

So
that’s the deal so often promised by the great “dealmaker.” And the back-channel
contacts to make this happen started well before the election season, started
at least as early (and probably earlier) as December 1, 2016, when, we now
know, General Flynn and Jared Kushner met with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.,
Sergey Kislyak, and suggested a back channel of communications using Russian facilities that could
avoid (Kushner stupidly thought) the security apparatus of the United States.
That’s about a year before the election and Trump people are already trying to
set up secure communications with the Russians. When President Obama on
December 29, 2016 increases sanctions on the Russians for election meddling, Putin
stays calm but Gen. Flynn actually calls Kislyak and tells him not to worry;
which comes to fruition the first day Trump is in office, January 21, 2017,
when State Department officials record alarm at the heavy pressure put on them
by Trump officials to drop all Russia
sanctions. Flynn, of course, denies to the FBI any contact with the
Russians, not knowing that they already have records of his contacts. Within
days, on January 26, acting AG Sally Yates goes to the White House to warn
Trump that General Flynn, by now his National Security Chief, has been
compromised and may be vulnerable to Russian blackmail. The Trumpster rejects
this several times, while, on January 27, he orders his Muslim Travel Ban and
also invites FBI director James Comey to dinner and asks him for a pledge of
loyalty—which Comey refuses. Comey also decides he’d better start keeping detailed
notes. When Sally Yates orders the Justice Department not to enforce the travel
ban, which she deems unconstitutional, she is summarily fired on January 31. Then
on February 7, Trump is stymied by his own Congress, when Senators Ben Cardin
and Lindsey Graham, having been alerted by State Department officials of the
President’s attempts to cancel the Russia sanctions, draft legislation
requiring the approval of Congress for any removal of those sanctions. Then the
heat turns up on the Russia scandal, and by February 13, General Flynn becomes
too hot to handle because of his lying about contacts with the Russians, and
he’s fired too.

Now
Trump’s main efforts shift to containing the damage generated by the Russian queries,
mainly by trying to ensure that he himself is not under investigation, and by
trying to get FBI director Comey to go easy on the now-compromised and -fired
General Flynn. This takes place in the now-famous meeting between Trump and
Comey, one for which Comey has memo notes, and which Trump of course denies.
This line continues, with a recorded nine meetings Trump has with Comey, all of
which, one way or the other, are designed to influence the FBI director to go
easy on the Russia investigation (and to keep Flynn from talking). This does
not mean the sanctions strand was let go; for on March 17, Trump members of the
National Security Agency email the State Department again asking for removal of
the sanctions so the Rosneft oil deal could go through. State responds that
this would be a bad move, not least because lifting the sanctions should
require the Russians to give something in return. Trump’s attempts to get
officials to influence the Russian investigation continue, but on May 8, Sally
Yates publicly testifies to the Senate Intelligence Committee that she went to
the White House because of her deep concern that Flynn was compromised. The
next day, May 9, the President fires FBI Director James Comey, allegedly
because of his unprofessional investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails. But
that excuse falls apart the day after that, when Trump, meeting with Russian
Foreign Minister Lavrov and the now-infamous Ambassador Kislyak in the White
House, calls Comey a “nut job,” but also says his worry over the “Russia
pressure” will now go away. Despite the fact that numerous members of the
administration have supported the Clinton pretext for the firing, the rug is
pulled out from under them on May 11, when White House deputy press secretary
Sarah Huckabee-Sanders confirms that FBI director Comey was fired to “bring the
Russia matter to a conclusion,” which Trump himself confirms later that day in
a CBS interview with Lester Holt. Trump adds that he would have fired Comey
regardless of the DOJ recommendation because it was the “made up Russia story”
that did it. Then, on May 31, though he can’t manage to get the sanctions on
Russia lifted, Trump signals that he will give back to Russia the two isolated
compounds (one in eastern Maryland, the other on Long Island) that President
Obama has confiscated in December as part of the punishment for election
meddling. Obama had asserted that the two estates were being used for
“intelligence-related purposes,” (i.e spying) and expelled at least 35
intelligence operatives working there. President Trump disagreed and, signaling
that he was apparently better disposed towards Putin than Obama, vowed to give
them back.

To
be sure, there are other niceties and details that I have left out (for
example, the new FBI director Trump has chosen, Christopher Wray, works for a
law firm with an office in Moscow, and ties to Russian oil companies Rosneft
and Gazprom.) and still more that will emerge in the weeks and months to come.
But this is the gist of it. The panic in the Trump White House over the
investigations into Russia meddling and Russia contacts clearly comes down to
the President’s fear of getting caught making a deal with the Russian leader
and/or his minions for one of two reasons: either to keep the dirty money and
dirty behavior he has always engaged in secret, or to keep secret the quid pro
quo of Russian help winning the presidency in exchange for lifting sanctions
and facilitating the Rosneft oil deal in the Arctic. Is either one (or both) sufficient
to impel an American president to commit what comes as close to treason as we
have ever seen? Trump’s past behavior indicates that it does. He has been an
“operator” as long as he’s been in business. Like a psychopath, he seems to
have no feeling at all for those he hurts or destroys—be it his loyal appointees
or the entire planet. He’s been in bed with criminals for most of his career,
and certainly since his sleazy financial disasters in the 1990s. And has always
managed to find the money for new ventures and bully or buy his way out of
criminal indictment. But the post of President of the United States carries
with it a different set of accountabilities, not to say responsibilities. That,
it seems to me, is what Donald Trump has run aground on: the persistent
microscope that focuses on the thoughts, behaviors, tics, and secrets of the
most powerful person in the world. It all, sooner or later, comes into view. So
if someone like myself can look at the timeline and the materials that are already
in the public domain and come to the conclusions that seem obvious, it would
seem a slam dunk for a Special Counsel like Former FBI-director Robert Mueller,
with all the investigative instruments at his disposal, to come to even more
damaging conclusions. The only question is: how much time will it take. Because
time for Donald Trump to continue the damage—both to this country and to the
world—that he’s already started, is what we can ill afford. Still, it seems
clearer than ever, especially after the testimony of James Comey last week,
that time is running out for the liar-in-chief. For this observer, it can’t run
out too soon.

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About Me

Lawrence DiStasi has worked as a writer, editor, teacher and historian since graduating from Dartmouth College (BA) and New York University (ABD). He has taught literature and composition at Gettysburg College, the University of California at Berkeley, and most recently in the Fall Freshman Program at UC Berkeley Extension. Since 1994, he has been project director of the historical exhibit, Una Storia Segreta: When Italian Americans Were "Enemy Aliens," shepherding it to more than fifty sites nationwide, and spearheading the movement it generated to pass "The Wartime Violation of Italian American Civil Liberties Act", signed into Public Law #106-451 by President William Jefferson Clinton. His published books include: MAL OCCHIO: The Underside of Vision (North Point Press: 1981), Dream Streets: The Big Book of Italian American Culture (Harper & Row: 1989), and Una Storia Segreta: The Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment during World War II (Heyday Books: 2001). He lives in Bolinas, CA.